


The Devil in Me

by szm



Series: Daredevil Kink Meme [8]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 03:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4591320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/szm/pseuds/szm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on this prompt - http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/4501.html?thread=7773845#cmt7773845</p>
<p>The Murdock boys have the devil in them - this is not a metaphor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil in Me

Matt was nine years old the first time he heard the voice of the devil. 

Well not _the_ Devil. His devil, the Murdock family devil.

His Grandma told the story best. A six year old Matt on her knee listening with rapt attention. “The Murdock boys have the devil in them.”

“Ma!” interrupted Jack Murdock. “What you tryin’ to scare Matty for?”

“Hush,” said his Grandmother. “The boy needs to know. It’s his burden too.” Jack sighed but didn’t interrupt again. “Long time ago, one of your ancestors did a very stupid thing. He summoned a devil to strike down another man who’d wronged him. The devil did it, in return for a warm place to stay. Your ancestor thought the devil meant a bed to sleep in and agreed. But the devil meant a soul to live in, and he claimed your ancestors. The man tried everything he could to get rid of the devil but he couldn’t. In the end he made friends with it. Kept it locked up in his mind, letting it out in bursts to keep it happy. The man and the devil got along well, and lived a good life. When the man died the devil moved into his first born son. See, hell maybe hot to us, but to a devil it’s unbearably cold, with no Grace of The Lord to keep them warm. But this devil had learnt how to live in a soul, and a soul is the purest expression of His Grace. The devil vowed never to give that up. And the Murdock men have had the devil in them ever since. One day, Matty, it’ll be your turn.”

The story had given Matt nightmares for weeks, but he can’t remember ever actually believing it. Besides, Matt’s whole life soon got scarier than an old story. His Grandma died. He was blinded. His Father was murdered. And Matt was here, 9 years old a few weeks after his Father’s death, lying on cot in an orphanage. Alone, scared, and _angry_.

“Oh this is very nice,” came the voice, deep, smooth and purring in his ear. “I can work with this, lots of good raw material. You’re young, so room to grow… yes, yes, very nice…”

“Who are you?” asked Matt his voice shaking.

“You know who I am, or did you never listen to your Grandma, Matty?” purred the voice, amused and warm in his ear.

“Get out of my head!” Matt _screamed_

“Shhhh,” soothed the voice. “If people come up here, what are you going to say? That you’re shouting at the voice in your head? Eh? Then instead of being the poor blind orphan boy you’ll be the _crazy_ poor blind orphan boy. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t want a devil in me,” said Matt stubbornly, although he did keep the volume down.

“Your Dad didn’t mind,” purred the devil. “I don’t want much, just a place to live. And all you want is to not be alone. I can see it; it burns right in the heart of your soul. You’re afraid that now your Dad is gone you’ll always be by yourself. If you let me stay I’ll always be right here with you. I’ve been taking care of the Murdock boys for centuries. I can take care of you too. “

“I can make you leave?” asked Matt.

“Anytime you want,” agreed the Devil. “After all it’s your soul. But in centuries none of your ancestors ever have. I can make you a little bit stronger, a little bit faster. That chemical did too much damage to your eyes for me to fix, but it affected your other senses, I can increase that effect even more. And I promise Matty, I won’t leave unless you make me. Don’t cast me out into the cold alone. Let’s be friends.”

Matt agreed, and he felt the devils sharp smirk on his face.

**

The Devil was not impressed by Stick.

“You know he’s trying to recruit you into some Holy War, right?” said the devil, unfortunately distracting Matt while he was trying to block Sticks blows. “I’ve seen a few of them in my time. They never end well.”

Matt barely managed to duck the blow and stumbled backwards. “He’s trying to make me _strong_ ,” Matt thought back, he’d long ago learnt how to reply to the devil without speaking as to not appear totally crazy to people around him.

The sensation of something snorting in disbelief in your mind is a strange one. “He’s _using_ your strength,” argued the devil. “Because he needs it, needs you.”

“He cares about me,” replied Matt with absolute certainty.

“Tell that thing in your head to shut up and concentrate,” snapped Stick.

“You know…” started Matt, blocking the next blow.

“Yeah, not sure how you do it, kid. Those things generally burn a human up in a few days. But you can’t trust it. You shouldn’t encourage it,” said Stick firmly.

“Yeah well, some of us learnt a thing called _subtlety_ ,” the devil muttered, sounding aggrieved.

“We made friends,” said Matt smirking like the devil sometimes did.

Stick actually looked shocked. “You can’t _make friends_ with a devil.”

“Go on,” purred the devil in Matt’s ear. “Let me out, just a little. Let’s show him how strong we can be, please Matty?”

Matt let the reigns go a little bit. The smirk on his face turned sharper as Stick swung his billy club again. Matt caught it and pulled it out of Stick’s grip. He dropped to the ground swinging his leg to swipe Sticks out from under him. In one movement Stick was on the ground and Matt was pushing the end of the club hard into his neck.

“Better,” croaked Stick.

“I had a little help from my _friend_ ,” purred Matt.

It turned out the devil didn’t scare Stick off. If anything it just made him train Matt harder. In the end it was a sweet gesture from a 12 year old boy that did that.

**

The devil was pretty quiet all through college enrolment day. Matt got the impression he found the whole process dull. But Matt could still feel him, curled up in his mind like a cat in the sun. Matt found the presence reassuring. 

Then Matt met his new roommate. Someone who seemed to genuinely like Matt straight from the start, not even tiptoeing around Matt’s blindness like it was something a little bit shameful that nice people didn’t talk about. Matt decided then and there that he liked Foggy and he was going to try and keep him.

The devil stirred sleepily, regarding Foggy with some mild interest. “I like him too,” he decided. “He’s warm.”

**

“I am _not_ studying anything even vaguely legal ever again,” groaned Foggy. “That was the worst test of my life. I might actually be an idiot.”

“It can’t have been that bad,” said Matt aiming for reassuring but he wasn’t sure he hit the mark. The sounds of Foggy dropping down to lie on the bed and groaning like that caused a parade of ideas to dance across his head. Ideas that involved less clothes and more touching/smelling/tasting… Matt felt like he wanted to get every little part of Foggy and pull them into himself, so far that he wouldn’t be able to tell where he started and Foggy ended. Almost like the devil in his soul, the one who was happily encouraging the naked/touching/ _licking_ ideas.

“No,” Matt told his devil firmly. “Not Foggy, he’s too important.”

“It was that bad,” replied Foggy, thankfully not hearing Matt’s inner conversation. “I’m going to give it all up and become a butcher, like my mother wanted…”

“You’d leave me to be a lawyer all on my own?” asked Matt, he was joking but the _don’tleavepleasedon’tgo_ panic was an old and well established one. 

The devil wrapped himself up in Matt’s mind, reminding him he would never me alone. Not really. It didn’t completely quell the fear but it helped.

Foggy sighed heavily. “Fine. I’ll stay. I’ll give up the exotic world of cut meats. Anything for you, Matty,” he said with a goofy smile that Matt returned. He said ‘Matty’ like the devil did. Amused and warm. 

“ _Anything for you, Matty_ ” repeated the devil with a purr that reverberated around Matt’s soul. “You should take him up on that. You could take him to bed. You could _have_ him, body and soul, at least for a little while.”

“No,” Matt said to the devil. “I want him to stay forever, if he gets too close, he’ll see you. What if you scare him away?”

**

“I don’t understand, you are letting her _steal_ him,” the devil was not happy and Matt winced as the voice grated across his mind.

“Foggy is not an object, he’s a person. He decided to date Marci. And if it makes him happy then good for him,” argued Matt.

“You can’t lie to me, I can _see_ what you want. You want Foggy, and you don’t want anyone else to have him,” the devil argued back.

“And that’s wrong!” said Matt out loud to emphasise his point. “I _want_ to lock him in a basement and keep him just for me, and you can’t _do that_ to people. Besides he’s going to leave sooner or later; he’s too good to be stuck with me forever.”

“I don’t see why you can’t do that,” said the devil sulkily. “Let me talk to him, just a little bit. I’ll explain why Marci isn’t good for him. You know she isn’t, she’s just as bad as us but in a different way. All she wants in life is money and power.”

“No,” said Matt firmly. “You don’t get to talk to Foggy, he never has to see you. He… shouldn’t be touched by that.”

“But he’s so warm,” whined the voice. “He makes you happy, and that makes your soul even warmer. I spent so many years out in the cold. Please Matty.”

“No,” said Matty stubbornly. 

“Fine,” snapped the devil. “Then let me out to talk to _her_ I’ll make sure she never thinks about coming near your boy again.”

“He’s not mine,” said Matt. “He’s… he’s Foggy. And I can’t just let you loose on Marci because she has the good sense to like Foggy.” He put his headphones on, trying to use the loud music to drown the devil out. When Foggy got home Matt was curled up under his duvet.

“Matt?” said Foggy gently, resting his hand on Matt’s ankle through the duvet to let Matt know where he was. “You okay?”

“Headache,” replied Matt. “You’re back? I thought you were staying with Marci?”

“We had a row,” said Foggy, sounding tired. “She ended up asking me outright if I’d rather be here with you. Turns out the answer was ‘yes’, who knew?” 

Foggy lay next to him on the bed but on top of the covers. Matt let himself move closer, the duvet would hopefully protect Foggy from the devil. “I never liked her anyway,” mumbled Matt into Foggy’s shoulder.

“I know,” sighed Foggy, stroking his fingers through the mop of hair that poked out the top of the duvet. The devil purred happily and Matt’s headache started to recede.

**

He went to his daughters’ room every night.

He went to his daughters’ room every night, and Matt could hear him.

He went to his daughters’ room every night, and Matt could hear him. And Matt could hear her crying after he left.

He went to his daughters’ room every night, and Matt could hear him. And Matt could hear her crying after he left. And no-one would listen.

He went to his daughters’ room every night, and Matt could hear him. And Matt could hear her crying after he left. And no-one would listen. And the Mother didn’t believe.

He went to his daughters’ room every night, and Matt could hear him. And Matt could hear her crying after he left. And no-one would listen. And the Mother didn’t believe. And eventually the daughter stopped crying, because the crying didn’t help. Nothing did.

“Let me out,” purred the devil. “If anyone deserves it he does. You can save her. _Let me out_ just for a bit.”

Matt let the devil out that night. 

He never went to his daughters’ room again.

**

Foggy found out. Foggy was hurt, was hurting, was so angry. Foggy was…

“Beautiful,” purred the devil.

Matt stopped mid-thought. “What?” he asked.

“Oh, you thought so too,” said the devil he sounded satisfied and smug. “All that anger and pain, all that intensity. It was all focused on you. _You_ not Karen, or Marci, or a client, or Brett, or some helpless lost soul. Just _you_. You liked that. I liked that he’s pretty when he’s hurting, but I am a devil after all.”

“You hurt him,” snarled Matt.

The devil seemed almost scared. “He’s hurt because you lied. I didn’t do that, you don’t even let me talk to him.”

“You made me into this,” argued Matt.

“I can’t do that,” said the devil gently. The gently part chaffed Matt, he wanted the fight. “I can enhance things that are already there, but I didn’t make you who you are. I’m just a devil, not God.”

Matt started crying again, the devil wrapped himself up in Matts mind. 

“Hush, my beautiful Matty. It’ll be okay,” he soothed.

“Foggy left,” said Matt, out loud, hearing his own voice break.

“No-one gets that upset unless they care. I promise where ever he went, whatever he’s doing right now? He’s only going to be able to think of you. You’re in his soul now, Matty. He’ll come back.”

**

Somehow, it all worked out. 

Foggy came back, slowly, piece by piece, and Matt hasn’t got all the pieces yet. But he will.

The devil gets a place to live and time to be free, to be let out, just for a few nights a week. Just on those who deserve it. And Matt gets to save at least some of the people. 

This lifetime is a good one as far as the devil is concerned. There’s only one more thing he wants.

Matt has a cut on his side. Far too small to bother Claire with, he could take care of it himself, but Foggy’s place is closer. Well, a little closer. Maybe. So Matt goes there. He drops lightly onto the fire escape outside Foggy’s window. He has his hand on the frame when the devil said, “Let him see me.”

“No,” said Matt, because it was an automatic response. 

“Please,” said the devil, “I just want him to see me. I won’t talk to him. Just this once. Please.”

“He’ll be scared…” said Matt hesitantly.

“He won’t, and if he was going to run he’d have done it by now. He sees my handiwork all the time. I just want him to see me, I love him too. Please, Matty.”

Foggy opened the window. “Hey, are you staying out there bleeding all night?” he asked half amused and half worried. “I mean, I’m assuming you’re bleeding _somewhere_ , right?”

The devil smirked at Foggy, sharp and lazy, through Matt’s face.


End file.
